im to offer herself
as an exemplary contrast. It was clear enough, however, that the happy
youth had no more sense for a motive than a deaf man for a tune, a
limitation by which, after all, she could gain as well as lose. He came
and went very freely on the business with which London abundantly
furnished him, but he found time more than once to say to her, "It's
awfully nice of you to look after poor Mummy." As well as his quick
speech, which shyness made obscure--it was usually as desperate as a
"rush" at some violent game--his child's eyes in his man's face put it
to her that, you know, this really meant a good deal for him and that he
hoped she would stay on. With a person in the house who, like herself,
was clever, poor Mummy was conveniently occupied; and Fleda found a
beauty in the candor and even in the modesty which apparently kept him
from suspecting that two such wiseheads could possibly be occupied with
Owen Gereth.

III

They went at last, the wiseheads, down to Poynton, where the palpitating
girl had the full revelation. "_Now_ do you know how I feel?" Mrs.
Gereth asked when in the wonderful hall, three minutes after their
arrival, her pretty associate dropped on a seat with a soft gasp and a
roll of dilated eyes. The answer came clearly enough, and in the rapture
of that first walk through the house Fleda took a prodigious span. She
perfectly understood how Mrs. Gereth felt--she had understood but
meagrely before; and the two women embraced with tears over the
tightening of their bond--tears which on the younger one's part were the
natural and usual sign of her submission to perfect beauty. It was not
the first time she had cried for the joy of admiration, but it was the
first time the mistress of Poynton, often as she had shown her house,
had been present at such an exhibition. She exulted in it; it quickened
her own tears; she assured her companion that such an occasion made the
poor old place fresh to her again and more precious than ever. Yes,
nobody had ever, that way, felt what she had achieved: people were so
grossly ignorant, and everybody, even the knowing ones, as they thought
themselves, more or less dense. What Mrs. Gereth had achieved was indeed
an exquisite work; and in such an art of the treasure-hunter, in
selection and comparison refined to that point, there was an element of
creation, of personality. She had commended Fleda's _flair_, and Fleda
now gave herself up to satiety. Pr